The TFG is a key element in the initial training of teachers which is not only a challenge for these future teachers, but also for Faculties, centers, specialization areas and professionals involved.
In this line it is important that the TFG connects with the educational reality, and for that reason they must respond to the educational needs, analyzing and proposing improvement actions of the school practices. Improving the quality of the TFG in the initial training of teachers requires raising responses to these educational needs and addressing multiple aspects related to the design -orientation and type of work-, development and follow-up of the tutor, tasks coordinated between different agents, training activities associated to the follow-up of the process of elaboration of the TFG, establishment of a guided follow-up of the work- and the evaluation-criteria, mechanisms and instruments of evaluation-. The TFG must be considered not only as a final product, but as a learning process in the initial training of teachers.
The Faculty of Education Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) is aware of these demands and is concerned with the improvement of the TFGs, which arisen in meetings of the units, departments, COA, etc., and also in the process of accreditation of the degrees of the Faculty by the External Evaluation Commission. Consequently, they created a working group to improve the TFG during 2016-2017-year course.
We believe that working on improving the quality of TFGs involves talking, among other aspects, of: contemplating follow-up and follow-up actions; promote learning methodologies that encourage research and connection with real-world situations; or build evidence of learning and evaluation mechanisms and instruments based on real situations.
In order to improve the quality of TFGs in Pre-Primary and Primary Education Degree of the Faculty of Education Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the objectives of the project are:
- Prepare a map of needs of the processes involved in the design, development and evaluation of the TFG.
- Link TFGs with school practice and research.
- Facilitate the process of accompaniment, monitoring and tutoring of the task that the student must develop, seeking spaces for interaction, learning and consensus among the students, the university agents and the school (figure of the tutors).
- Define criteria and mechanisms for evaluating the task that students must develop in the framework of the TFG.